Throughout the world, psychology degrees have emerged as one of the most popular options at colleges and universities. Not only does this field of study offer a tremendous opportunity for personal and educational growth, but a major in psychology has the added benefit of opening up a wide range of career opportunities for those who choose it.

If you’re a student, you have a number of options available to you when it comes to selecting a major. It can feel overwhelming and if you have always been fascinated by the idea of earning a psychology degree, it is important to fully explore the option before making a decision. To determine if your fascination with psychology is enough to pursue an education and possibly a career, be sure to ask yourself the following questions…

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About the guest author:
Cindy McDonald is a guest post author who covers topics surrounding psychology and shares with us the above article. Cindy is also the owner of Best Christian Dating Sites where she gives tips for safe online dating.

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It seems like everyone is going green these days, and the field of psychology is no exception. Ecopsychology is a relatively new term, coined in 1992 by the historian Theodore Roszak in his book, The Voice of the Earth. It draws on concepts from ecology, psychology, and philosophy and concerns the intimate connection between humans and nature.

Patricia Duggan has a Masters in Psychology and has been practicing for 11 years. She maintains the site Psychology Degree. She writes about various subjects within the psychology field.

Click the title to read more on this relatively new field in psychology.

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I’ll admit that a few months ago I was unsure about whether to continue with this blog. I was spending hours on posts which ultimately reached an audience of about 10 people a day – often repeat readers. With university commitments, it became hard to uphold an academic blog so I decided to push it aside in favour of other work.

Well, what a surprise I had when I returned today!

It would seem that I have jumped from about 30,000 all time hits to nearly 80,000 in a matter of months, with my blog attracting around 700 hits per day the last week. I can’t express how happy it’s made me; if anything, it’s “re-motivated” me. I’ll continue writing posts as soon as I can.

Thanks again, it’s always the readers that make the blog.
Speak soon!

Sam.

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Erik from JustJobs.com has kindly provided an interview conducted with a school psychologist for PsychoHawks. If you’ve ever considered becoming a school psychologist (more commonly referred to as an educational psychologist in the UK), this may provide answers to questions you have. Even if you’re not particularly interested in this path of psychology, it’s an interesting read! I thank Erik, and JustJobs, once again for their contribution.

Click the title to read the interview!

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Learning is something that is greatly advantageous for the survival of both humans and other animals. By learning behaviours that produce favourable outcomes, we can aid our well-being and repeat such behaviours to acquire the benefits more than once. It is described as:

“An adaptive process in which the tendency to perform a particular behaviour is changed by experience. As conditions change, we learn new behaviours and eliminate old ones.”

Martin, Carlson and Buskist, 2007.

There have been a great deal of different learning theories proposed; the main three being habituation, classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Habituation is deemed the simplest form of learning; when we learn to ignore a repeated stimuli. For example, prior to reading this sentence, you will have learnt to ignore the feeling of clothes against your skin. Of course, as soon as you read that, you are instantly aware of the feeling your clothes are producing (unless you’re reading this naked, which I’d rather not assume…). Classical conditioning is learning to associate two stimuli with one another. For example, your mouth might water in response to the scent of a cooking steak (or even the thought of one!). Both these learning theories will be explored in greater detail in subsequent learning posts.

It may seem wiser to begin my learning posts with habituation, as it is the most basic form of learning. This is true, but I believe operant conditioning will be of more use to students and will prove to be more popular than a habituation post. There is much more to discuss, and it will (in my opinion) prove much more interesting to read.

So – operant conditioning. What is it?

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Nobody wants to believe that they’re susceptible to conforming to the behaviour of others. We have our own minds, our own will, and hate thinking that anything else has an influence over that. It is certainly not that case, however, according to vast amounts of research into the area.

Perhaps one of the most influential studies into the field of majority influence is that of Asch. He conducted a number of experiments throughout the 1950’s aiming to test just how easily people are willing to conform when pressured by a majority. His results were important not just in minority influences, but also group interaction. So, what did he do and what were the results?

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Humans (and indeed all animals) spend endless amounts of time perceiving and making judgments about their world and the behaviour of others. We cannot help it; our brain forms snap judgements every second we’re receiving sensory stimuli. We particularly form judgements of other people and their behaviour. This is useful, because is enables us to save cognitive resources. If we stopped and analysed the behaviour of everyone in great detail, we would be completely overwhelmed. We simply don’t have the time or resources to look at someone who has fallen over and ponder: “Okay, well she looks about 60 so maybe she fell because of a bad hip? It could also be because of the ice, or maybe her shoes don’t have enough grip. I can therefore conclude that she is not a clumsy person, but it is because of her age”. Add this to the hoards of people we encounter for brief seconds in everyday life, and we would struggle to cope.

There are a number of social perception models which explain the various ways in which we form these quick judgements. This post will look at perhaps one of the more “important” concepts – attribution. So what is it?